The afternoon was further filled with attending the Emperor at Court. Which meant that Kordas milled about at the back of the Great Audience Chamber while the Emperor attended to various petitions and presided over disputes. He also received a couple of ambassadors that afternoon, and heard a legal case which had been appealed to him, involving two of his Dukes who presided over Duchies so large they made Valdemar look like Squire Lesley’s little holding. This was apparently a very serious matter, although Kordas couldn’t make head or tail of the arguments, and it might have come to a duel if either of the Dukes had been under forty.

He caught a lot of glances from other courtiers, and caught people whispering to each other out of the corner of his eye, and felt a high level of satisfaction at the impression his “discussion” with Merrin at luncheon had caused.

Now, this would have been purest disaster, if he’d seriously been looking to increase his influence at Court, because by dinner this absolutely would have gotten to the Emperor.

But, since the opposite was his intention, well, he could only be pleased that his plan had worked.

Once again—bumpkin achieved. The bumpkin who only occupied a quarter of his manor because he didn’t have that many servants or people in his own court. The bumpkin who tolerated bats in his towers and badgers in his cellars. And cats chasing mice over him in the middle of the night.

So, on the one hand—valuable because he clearly knew what he was doing when it came to horses. Clearly produced the best horses of all sorts in the entire Empire, if he had Princes asking to reserve the entire year’s worth of Charger foals.

But also, clearly someone you didn’t need to worry about when it came to social climbing, because he had one thing on his mind, and that was pedigrees.

Also, clearly someone who didn’t have a resource you could readily plunder. Because you would still need his personal expertise. And you wouldn’t have that if you stripped his lands bare.

The result was . . . interesting. People actually began to relax around him. They didn’t fear him. They didn’t suspect him of double dealing. They didn’t suspect him of scheming to get what they had.

Because clearly, if he was the sort of man who was grateful to have a manor riddled with vermin, if he was the sort of man who put up with smoky chimneys and smelly privies, and did so with a self-deprecating charm, then he was absolutely no threat to anyone else’s ambitions.

So when the Court was dismissed for everyone to go back to their chambers to bathe and change for dinner, he felt a little—a very, very little—less tension.

For now.

Because this was the Court of the Emperor, and the situation could turn in an instant.

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